He also swindled £40,000 in fraudulent housing and council tax benefits and used the cash to fund his lavish holidays.

Mainwaring, from Bury, who worked as a self-employed health consultant and volunteer patients’ champion, was even away on holiday when police arrived to arrest him after the fraud came to light last year. Now he has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to 13 separate charges.

At a hearing at Bolton Crown Court, Mainwaring, of Dunsters Court, Bury, admitted nine counts of fraud, one count of theft and three counts of making a false representation to obtain benefits. NHS bosses say Mainwaring has betrayed the patients he was supposed to be representing – and that people should be told of his true character.

Mainwaring carried out the scam between 2006 and last year when he worked for Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT, Bury NHS Trust. He also oversaw changes to hospital services in north Manchester. While working as a self-employed consultant for the Healthy Futures programme, he invoiced the trusts with a VAT number belonging to another firm, pocketing cash himself instead of giving it to tax man.

An internal investigation was launched when it was noticed that patients’ body Bury LINk, which Mainwaring volunteered for, had been contracting services from a company he owned.

It was then discovered Mainwaring had been giving a false VAT number, which actually belonged to a taxi firm in Ramsbottom, when invoicing NHS Trusts for work he had carried out.

In total he legitimately received between £300,000 and £400,000 in payment over six years - but also kept thousands more he should have paid in tax by using the fake VAT number.

Along with the NHS money, Mainwaring was also found to have wrongly claimed £32,457 in housing benefits and £6,656 in council tax benefits between 2005 and 2007.

Mainwaring was able to claim benefits after giving false statements about his income.

After being arrested last year he resigned from Bury LINk and also had his contract with Healthy Futures terminated.

An NHS spokesman said: “We are very disappointed and angry that someone who purported to be the patients’ representative through Bury LINk was in reality defrauding the NHS of tens of thousands of pounds to fund items such as lavish cruises.

“These are clear betrayals of trust not only towards the NHS but to the community in general and those patients whose rights this man claimed to represent as their champion.”

“Local people have a right to feel very betrayed by someone claiming to be a champion and a voice for local patients.”

The spokesman said it was unclear whether the NHS will get back the money.

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